Together with International Lions and Irish rugby legend, Brian O’Driscoll, tech entrepreneur Ray Nolan recently launched Ultimate Rugby – the first ever global rugby app and online community which brings fans up to the minute news of all professional games around the world.

The unique interactive community provides content, news and messages direct to fans’ smartphones from international professional rugby players.

The Ultimate Rugby Community is not like your regular rugby fan site or app – its key strength is that it is unaffiliated with specific rugby football unions and clubs – thereby allowing the rugby fan total access across the global spectrum of Rugby Unions. Fans get to join the debate on the Pro12, or 6 Nations; the Premiership and H-Cup – or who the best starting Lions 15 will be when they tour Australia, as well as what we’re used to – all the Southern Hemisphere action.

Top quality editorial covers match previews and reviews, and is combined with live scores, videos, competitions, social media and e-commerce to give a truly unrivalled experience for the ultimate rugby fan.

Ultimate Rugby is for the global rugby fan, as much as the local: within the space of a few clicks or a few scrolls, users can find out how Argentina are doing in their first season of the Rugby Championship as easily as they might the starting 15 for Exeter’s first game in the Heineken Cup against defending champions Leinster.

Ultimate Rugby allows players full control over their own content: writing their biographies and interacting with the global rugby community – an entirely unique feature to Ultimate Rugby.

Says Nolan:

When Brian and I met a year ago, we saw this opportunity from different sides of the business world and the rugby pitch. We wanted to create the ultimate resource for both the fan, but also the player to access the information they wanted on the go. However, we very quickly saw that this could be used by players to centralise and manage their own professional profiles. We have seen very positive reaction by fans, players and even sporting agents to Ultimate Rugby.

Says the legendary O’Driscoll:

From the player perspective, you have to balance, sporting, professional and increasingly celebrity profiles on and off the pitch. Both current and future professional players are under increasing pressure to manage their profile in a professional and a commercial sense. Ultimate Rugby delivers on two key principles; giving fans access to their favourite players on the go, and allowing the players to manage their interactions, and their professional profile on the go, which will be crucial to helping them build on their potential career potential and maintain their reputation.

Ultimate Rugby is available for download on iTunes HERE, and Android users can expect to see it on their handsets in the coming months.